Although the sun came out early this morning in New Bern after a night of heavy rains and wind stirred up by Tropical Storm Andrea, the worse might not be over.

Brian Cullen, meteorologist with the Newport National Weather Service, said at 8:45 a.m. today Andrea was still over South Carolina and maintaining its strength as a tropical storm.

“There is some dry air working in the east side of the storm,” he said, explaining why the rains had stopped and the sun broke out. “But we certainly don’t want people to let their guard down. There can be times when you see the sun come out but there is a continued threat of heavy rains and gusty winds throughout the day.”

The overnight rains and wind were just part of the outer bands of the tropical storm, Cullen said. The storm is now tracking northeast from South Carolina.

“We’ve been seeing the effects since last evening,” he said. “There have been periods of heavy rain and gusty winds. Some localized flooding was reported in Washington and there were some public reports of trees down in Onslow County near Hubert and Maysville that happened earlier this morning.”

Cullen said there was no confirmation that a tornado touched down in Onslow County or anywhere else in the state over night, although tornado warnings were issued.

And Eastern North Carolina is still under a tornado watch until 1 p.m., he said.

“We will be feeling the effects of the tropical storm throughout the day,” Cullen said.

Once the storm arrives in North Carolina, there could be winds of 25-35 mph with possible gusts of 45 mph, and 2-3 inches of rainfall, Cullen said.

“The rain was spotty over night,” he said. “Duplin County got 2 inches, but generally there has been about 1 inch so far. We should start seeing the demising effects of the storm this evening.”

Colleen Roberts, New Bern public information officer, said there were very few power outages reported this morning. There were about 15-20 outages on Grantham Road, and an outage at Twin Rivers YMCA at 100 YMCA Lane, but those outages were not believe to have been caused by the storm, she said.

The outages on Grantham road may have been caused by a bad underground circuit and a transformer or a fuse in the transformer may have caused the outage at the YMCA, Roberts said.

Power was expected to be returned to customers by about 10:30 a.m., she said.

New Bern Public Works did not receive any reports of significant damage, Roberts said.

Police were directing traffic at some intersections in Havelock where traffic signals went dark later Friday morning.

Power was out for half of Havelock, reportedly due to a blown transformer on Poplar Road.

Sue Book of the Sun Journal and Ken Buday of the Havelock News contributed to this report.

Eddie Fitzgerald can be reached at 252-635-5675 or at eddie.fitzgerald@newbernsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @staffwriter3.